Page 12 - IB March 2025

Analysis Analysis

This is not about
consultation, this

is about control.

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
in parliament after an unsuccessful no
confidence vote against him recently.
Photo: Cook Islands Government

WELLINGTON EYES STRATEGIC

DENIAL IN THE COOK ISLANDS

By Jon Fraenkel When the latest MOUs signed by PM Brown in February 2025
were publicly released, they were typical Chinese government
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ row with the aspirational statements promising to ‘promote’, ‘uphold’ and
Cook Islands government in February was every bit as odd ‘enhance’ this or that, but were light on detail.
as his January quarrel with the President of Kiribati. It arose Although there was no policing or security element, analysts
after the Cook Islands Prime Minister, Mark Brown, announced seized on a reference to potential assistance for ‘port
that he was travelling to Beijing to sign an ‘action plan’ for wharves, shipbuilding and ship repair’ as evidence of strategic
a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ (CSP) with China. duplicity.
The mercurial Peters interpreted this as a breach of the Cook Yet the sole concrete public commitment arising from the
Islands’ free association agreement with New Zealand, which February Beijing summit was US$2.3 million, or even less,
requires ‘consultation’ over issues of foreign policy. Days to replace a rusty old vessel that plies from the north to the
later, the opposition in Rarotonga lodged a no-confidence south of the island group.
motion alleging that Brown’s government intended to break Since—according to the Lowy Institute data—the annual
the 1965 agreement with New Zealand under which Cook average aid flow from China to the Cook Islands since 2008 has
Islanders automatically obtain New Zealand citizenship. The been US$8 million per annum, it remains to be seen whether
Beijing-aligned Prime Minister denied the charge. He survived the latest commitments offer any net addition.
the parliamentary challenge by 13 votes to 9. “This is not The various agreements reached between the Cook Islands
about consultation, this is about control, ” he angrily told his and New Zealand down the years are not clear on what is and
country’s parliament. is not allowed. The 1964 Constitution leaves New Zealand
The row over the Cooks’ China deal needs to be considered responsible for the ‘external affairs and defence of the Cook
in the broader context of New Zealand’s reappraisal of its Islands’, but a 1970s exchange of letters between then New
regional relationships. The Cook Islands previously signed a so- Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk and his Cook Islands
called ‘strategic partnership’ agreement with China in 2014, counterpart, Albert Henry, talked vaguely of a ‘voluntary
one that was already upgraded to ‘comprehensive’ in 2018, arrangement which depends on shared interests and shared
without provoking much fuss in Wellington. New Zealand itself sympathies’.
signed such an agreement with China in 2014, as did Australia. A 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration outlined a ‘relationship

12 Islands Business, March 2025